Greater Manchester Police, one of the UK's largest police forces, is today publishing details of every incident it deals with on social-network website Twitter.
Launched amid the prospect of imminent budget cuts, the project is being used to highlight the workload facing the police force in a short 24-hour period.
In under 10 hours, officers had logged over 1,000 calls from the general public. Such is the quantity of calls that Greater Manchester Police tweets are now spread over three Twitter accounts.
Commenting on the initiative, Chief Constable Peter Fahy said he wants to "show the public the complexities of modern policing, which often aren’t fully appreciated".
"Policing is often seen in very simple terms, with cops chasing robbers and locking them up. However the reality is that this accounts for only part of the work they have to deal with"
Illustrating the diverse nature of police work, today's recorded calls include a "complaint from member of the public that builders have turned up to complete work two months late".
Another caller provided a "death message to be passed on", whilst others reported traffic collisions, burglars, cases of computer hacking, and more serious issues including lost children and hate crimes.
"A lot of what we do is dealing with social and health problems such as missing children, people with mental health problems and domestic abuse."
"This work is not recognised in league tables and measurements – yet is a huge part of what we do," said Chief Constable Fahy.
Suggesting that police performance should be measured in different ways, he adds that "there needs to be more focus on how the public sector as a whole is working together to tackle society’s issues and problems."
"We see time and again the same families, the same areas and the same individuals causing the same problems and these people are causing a considerable drain to the public purse."
"Instead of the public sector organisations having separate pots of money we could spend it more efficiently it were one big pot. This could be achieved by working together more effectively, by joining up and sharing the responsibility of the issues that we are all dealing with."
Today's tweets are being published on the Greater Manchester Police website, and users can follow the activity via the following three Twitter accounts; @gmp24_1, @gmp24_2, @gmp24_3.
